"Hyperion Entertainment is very pleased to announce the immediate availability (for registered AmigaOne customers) of Amiga OS 4.0, The Final Update. Originally released in May of 2004, Amiga OS 4.0 is the most stable, modern and feature-rich incarnation to date of the multi-media centric operating system launched by Commodore Business Machines (CBM) in 1985 with which it still retains a high degree of compatibility. Amiga OS 4.0, The Final Update is the culmination of 5 years of development and takes the form of a stand-alone ISO image which contains a full installation of all Amiga OS 4.0 components. A list of new features can be found here. Availability of PowerPC hardware suitable for operation with Amiga OS 4.0 will be announced by third parties early 2007." Together with Microsoft selling Linux and Apple switching to Intel, this is the definitive proof that hell is now officially frozen. I sure know I'm taking ice skates with me to the grave.

I was under the impression that AOS4 would only boot on dedicated PPC hardware (and not a normal PPC like a Mac) very much like RISC OS (except they sell a specialised commercial emulator too).

I can't quite understand this choice, as it only limits the users, increases hardware costs and lowers hardware availability. It's like deciding to make a great game, but rather than releasing it on all major consoles; deciding instead to release a special console solely for that game and that game only.

I used to use Amiga OS (and great that it was), but now as an outsider, my only opinion is that the next version should run on generic hardware (I've got a macmini that would dual boot Amiga), and forgo compatibility by emulating/virtualising an older environment for old software, in order to add proper multi tasking and memory protection, etc.

I can't actually think of any UI that was more ugly and less intuitive than the Amiga workbench.

Maybe Workbench 1.x, okay. As for Workbench 2.x and higher, they not only looked nice, but they had a lot of features that other UIs of the time lacked. *At least* compared to MS Windows (and I used both at the time).

The one serious defect of the Amiga UI, IMHO, was the default String gadget. Until they started releasing it with ClassAction as a default (in 3.5 or 3.9?), you couldn't copy & paste text. There were a number of other issues with it, too, but that's the one that always burned me.

Have you never used TOS? Windows 3.11? Which version of Amiga OS are you talking about? 1.3? Compare that with Windows 1 which came out about the same time?

Seriously what problems do you have with Amiga OS? the hiding of the right mouse button options until you press the right mouse button? Or the different drag down screens (which I think, anyway) work as well if not better than the modern Linux Multiscreens? and much better than Windows XPs alt+tab?

I used GEM (which is the actual GUI of the Atari ST. TOS was more of a wannabe Unix underbelly of the Atari Operating System, GEM was the actual GUI.) I completely agree with you though, it was pretty ugly. Even Workbench 1.3 was better looking, at least it had a default color of blue instead of green (never could figure that one out, GREEN?)

I could be wrong about this, but I think AmigaOS was the first to have color icons, plus it had the drop-down screens, etc. It was very much a innovative and very usable operating system. There are still many capabilities that still are not comparable in modern day operating systems.

The 2.x and above versions of it were simply works of art. Especially after you add in some of the third party mods like magic menu, mUI etc. They make it much smoother than Windows XP. I've tried several times to make my Gnome desktop more Amiga like, but it doesn't quite make it. There is the amiwm, but it doesn't quite do it justice either. Hell half the time I boot up uae just to play with the AmigaOS.

I bet you only knew Amiga OS 1.x. Version 2 was rather pretty (especially compared to the arse-ugly Windows 3.1 of that time. A few of us had Graphic cards back then (which where rather uncommon in Amigas since most people just stuck with amiga native graphics chipset) and with an picasso graphics card, amiga os 3 together with MUI it was realy beautifull.

And an UI i can think of that was even uglyer than Amiga OS 1.x was RISC OS, the definately uglyest OS ever concieved. With those horrible patterns stuck to everything RISC OS looked like it was designed by an 6 year old (IMHO).

One thing I never quite got with English, should there be a comma after the word "picky" as the word "and" is a joining word?

So, something like

"Should there not be a grammar checker on OSNews? I am not picky and English is not my first language, but still..."

Another interesting thing with English is that if you take the word "not" out of this sentence, it is still valid...

i.e.

"Should there be a grammar checker on OSNews? I am not picky and English is not my first language, but still..."

----

By the way, congratulations Amiga, good to see you finally get 4.0 out there. I was waiting for this over 2 years ago now when I took a trip to Melbourne to see a demo of it. I remember how many bugs it had but also saw its potential too.

I also remember thinking that DE was the way to go, not an OS tied to a specific platform. I think any chance DE had is pretty much disolved now sadly...

Yes, I know WIndows is tied to x86 and OS X is tied to Mac h/w, but as Amiga 4.0 was starting from scratch, they had the chance to break that mould...

Having said all that, I wish Amiga OS with it's light weight, fast context switching and so on all the best... Maybe it will take off as a set-top box.

English grammar usage - There exists an online version of a well regarded old textbook called Elements Of Style. See Part II section 4 for some guidance on the use of commas with conjunctions. http://www.bartleby.com/141/

Back OT

In a few days time, when the first user reviews appear, I think we'll have a clearer picture of what this release really means.

This post is a note from a marketing guy of Amiga Inc., It's very wrong see this is posted like news, it's not an objective note.

1. More stable than original AmigaOS from CBM? Are you kidding? I've seen OS4 crashing even a lot more than Windows XP on certain machines with security "problems".

2. It can be modern, but it's quite old compared to the revolution the original AmigaOS was in the past. It's still outdated compared to most modern operating systems in terms of applications, hardware support and features.

3. Feature-Rich: it can be more feature-rich than an average AmigaOS, but not more than most really modern operating systems. Even homebrew projects like Haiku are progressing a lot faster than AmigaOS4. I see MorphOS a lot more feature-rich in general than AmigaOS4 at this moment, maybe MorphOS 1.5 will surpass that a lot more (I don't believe it will appear but I've seen more strange stuff to occour).

4. What means "The Final Update"' phrase? Does this is the really promissed final version of AmigaOS 4.0 or another stupid marketing phrase for blind name followers?

This is another crap marketing campaign by Amiga Inc., very sad OSNews publish this...

It's not from Amiga Inc, it's from Hyperion. It is a major release of a minor OS, therefore it is News, at least to a OS based news forum.

1: No one said AmigaOS was seriously stable, well in fact it is, but dodgy programs will crash it out, which is a little err. "old fashioned" these days. But it will often warm reboot faster than Windows seems to close a crashed program, and unlike Windows XP will not be zomibified by simply connecting to the Internet. Mostly because no one can be bothered to be write viruses/malware for something that takes up so little marketspace.

2: It's the most modern AmigaOS, Hardware support is very good, but since it runs on custom hardware that's no great suprise. Availabilty of applications is not the OS fault, features are pretty good to be honest. It's a modern OS that I use as a primary OS, sure the Web Browsers are rubbish compaired to, say, Opera but how is that Hyperion the OS makers fault?

3: A new Web browser came out yesterday, new Mail program (Simplemail) came out today, new Direrctory Opus came out yesterday, new Mplayer err. day before yesterday. I don't know how Haiku's doing recently, but Amiga OS4 was much more advanced that the version I saw a couple of months ago.

I've never used MorphOS, but I'd like to, I hope it does well, I hope Haiku does well, as unlike you I don't pick on small niche OS's I hope they all do well and bring something new and intresting to the table.

4: Good question, I dunno, quite what Final Update means, full offical release when some Hardware comes out? I know it was a stupid idea to link the OS to custom hardware, I think we all know that now, but it's the way it is, and what people have to live with.

I am not, as the person who submitted this anything to do with Amiga inc or Hyperion.

Let me answer this to dispel some uncertainity: "Final update" means it is the final version for the actual AmigaOS4.0 owners, which brings up their previous AmigaOS4.0 version to the level of the final release. The "Final version" (read: the CD) will be (hopefully) released and spread together with the yet-unnamed PowerPC based hardware.

About stability of AmigaOS4: What does mean this phrase? This is clearly marketing words by some liar trying to atract nostalgics..."Amiga OS 4.0 is the most stable, modern and feature-rich incarnation to date of the multi-media centric operating system launched by Commodore Business Machines (CBM) in 1985 with which it still retains a high degree of compatibility."

About reboot speed of AmigaOS4: That feature is interesting for a desktop-oriented operating system, byt it's better not needing that. In Linux is rarely needed, only for certain stuff like kernel upgrade, but MorphOS only needs very few seconds for starting/rebooting (less than AmigaOS4).

About network security of AmigaOS4: You said it, nobody worries about developing viruses/malware for an operating system nobody knows. Maybe the vulnerabiilties are there, but nobody used it. Malware/virus stuff has usually commercial interests, so unpopular systems are mostly a lot less focused in this.

About AmigaOS4 being the most modern AmigaOS: Probably it can be by name and version (4.0) but there are unofficial clones like AROS and MorphOS with practically the same features if no more. The features of AmigaOS4 are practically the same of the latest 68k AmigaOS with some freeware addons from Aminet or new unofficial clones.

About software support and the OS developer: The OS developer has a lot of responsability about software avaibility for it's operating system. A videogame system don't sell without games, a computer don't sell without software for it. Look at Microsoft operating systems and understand the main reason because are the most used, the availability of all kind of software for it. Like others said, even Risc OS has Firefox, and MorphOS is having a WebKit-based port and a browser using it named Sputnik.

About the "massive" software update for AmigaOS4: Simplemail is GPL and being available for AmigaOS classic and it's clones, including MorphOS and AROS. Ibrowse update seems interesting, but still years away of browsers like Opera nd WebKit-based ones. Directory Opus 4 is GPL and ported to most amiga-like operating systems (http://dopus.free.fr) and having a MorphOS (maybe AROS too) version in development using MUI. With Mplayer that is good because the MorphOS port seems a bit outdated, but the mad (and genious) guys at mplayer/ffmpeg recommends to using the latest SVN code (sadly there aren't periodic builds for amiga-like OSes).

About Haiku progress: I'm sure there are other people here and others I know that can inform you a lot better than me, but check a bit http://haiku-os.org for some more info.

About "final release" term only for AmigaOne and custom hardware: I agree about this is a very stupid idea trying to get more money from users, resulting in the contrary. About living with it, that's wrong because sadly practically all AmigaOS-like operating systems has no exclussive killer apps so most people will not worry about them, only used by a few enthusiasts and nostalgics.

About submitting this to OSNews: It's nice you post news about the Amiga community on news sites with more general information and people know this is still moving, but it's very wrong you paste the text from the Hyperion site. At least you can write a small objective news witthout all that annoying marketing crap, that text is totally ridiculous and gives very bad impression to everyone has technical knowledge and reads it.

About network security of AmigaOS4 At least it is just diffcult for hackers to exploit it.

About AmigaOS4 being the most modern AmigaOS

>Probably it can be by name and version (4.0)
>but there are unofficial clones
>like AROS and MorphOS with practically the same
>features if no more.

Are you AROS or MorphOS user? Well I am MorphOS user and I can say that the experience on two systems it is similar, but absolutely not the same.
I prefer far long MorphOS, but I found AmigaOS pretty good when I used it in computer exhibits.

About software support and the OS developer

>Like others said, even Risc OS has Firefox,
>and MorphOS is having a WebKit-based port
>and a browser using it named Sputnik.

Well Did you saw that IBrowse 2.4?
It is sure one of the best browsers I have ever seen. It needs now only to have updated the rendering engine.

IBrowse runs also on MorphOS...

...and Sputnik it is accredited it could being developed for AmigaOS too.

About the "massive" software update for AmigaOS

You made a nice list of Amiga programs but it seems you forgot Hollywood. Do you heard of it? It runs on AmigaOS too...

About Haiku progress:. If you have news related with Haiku. It is better you start another topic thread simply regarding Haiku subject.

About "final release" term only for AmigaOne and custom hardware: Nice try.

But this OS it is final version. Fullstop.

Any previous release was just a betatester pre-release, even if usable with no problems, and quite stable.

I couldn't see any OS with quite stable betaversions before AmigaoS 4.0, and still new OSes betatester pre-realeases from alien systems are oftwen quite an ugly mess of patches.

all AmigaOS-like operating systems has no exclussive killer apps so most people will not worry about them, only used by a few enthusiasts and nostalgics

I never see a mailer like YAM in alien OSes.

Never see programs like Bars'n'pipes, Hollywood, ImageFx, etcetera, etcetera.

Other OSes are full of progs but often the OS it is ugly, and the programs are nothing than HUGE monster applications full of features and no usability.

About submitting this to OSNews:

>It's nice you post [cut blah blah]

It will be nice you will post with a positive attitude and no sterile critics and often without background regarding AmigaOS.

>>>
but it's very wrong you paste the text from the Hyperion site. At least you can write a small objective news witthout all that annoying marketing crap, that text is totally ridiculous and gives very bad impression to everyone has technical knowledge and reads it.
>>>

Amigarobbo he is just an user and reader of OSNews.

News should be verified and amended by maintainers of OSNews.

It is not the very first time that newstitles on OSNews are just a Cut&Paste from sites of OS makers, and regarding ANY OS it will be not the last time.

Sometimes titles of news are just a cut&paste from official sites of OS makers. We readers cam not prevent things like these to happen.

"Network security" ? Amiga doesn't even has multi user. It means that any user has all the rights (ie: "root privileges" any unix user would say). Not to mention that I'm pretty sure a lot of network software (or the tcp stack itself, which hasn't been updated for what... 8 years ?) is full of buffer overflow flaws. But yes, we could still say AmigaOS is secured, because before the remote user gets access to the system, it's highly possible the buffer overflow would have brought all the system down, because of the lacking of memory protection...

I could go on, and on, for every point... but does it matter ?

I have nothing against people who love this OS. But please, please, get REAL... AmigaOS is outdated, is not secured at all,... And no: booting quickly is not a valid argument when you know that most nowadays systems have uptime of months without any problems (and yes, that includes WindowsXP, sorry about that). So you don't really care if your computer takes 1min or 30sec to boot... really...

Sigh... Maybe sometime Amiga users will wake up, and we will finally be able to talk about a completely new, fresh AmigaOS.

As far as I remember from the original AmigaOS on classic machines, you could create different partitions with different AmigaOS installations and select which one to boot in the early start up menu.

This is one of the cool things about AmigaOS, because it works differently from regular multibooting: To create a new "user", you can simply copy the contents of the original partition to the new one and it will boot immediately from that, when you select it in the start up menu. You can do this, because the core system with libraries only take up a few megabytes. It's simply so small that you can throw it around like that, so you don't need complicated tools to handle this operation. You can do this directly from Worbench.

This is not a true multiuser environment in that it offers no security and locking down of the different environments, but only separate desktops with different settings.

You can also not just switch between them, but need to reboot. But that's faster than switching users in other OS'es anyway. :-)

This can be useful if you have a "developer" setup which launches a developer environment on boot or a "gaming" setup, which offers the games drawer to be opened on boot. It's also useful as a panic or mirror partition in case your original gets destroyed and absolutely need access to information on the Amiga.

If you are short on partitions, different startup scripts can be used to launch different environments. You don't need to launch the desktop itself if you are short on resources, but precisely only the applications or the game you need. No need to run a big and heavy desktop in the background when playing a game, right? Why launch an entire desktop and all sorts of funny services, when all you need is to play a game. That's silly! :-)

This can be created in a few minutes using a text editor and edit the S:startup-sequence file to ask for program launc options. It's so beautifully simple. Try doing that on any other OS.

>or the tcp stack itself, which hasn't been updated for what... 8 years ?

ehr... rewritten from scratch ... by the way Amiga had a real TCP stack with IP filtering, scripting control, ftp folders as system folders in directory tree, etc... while Windows was still dreaming to have at least some coherent connection code, leaking and sharing your folders with the whole internet...

if you install some software (servers & services + a firewall) and use it for a couple of years without reinstalling it every some months, like my 3.2 GHz Windows XP machine, you are lucky if it will completely boot in 5 minutes (I'd reinstall it but I'm scared about having to reinstall all the software again - my entire UAE install with OS 3.9 + all software and data took just half an hour on the same machine, sigh!)

- it's fast (i mean lightnening fast on everyday operation, files ops etc)
- it's highly and easily customizable.(you can change just about *everything* to your liking.. very easily)
- the system is very simple to understand and logic to use.
(nothing you can compare with linux, macos & windows..
i mean like: system's files hierarchy, and way of working:
library go in "libs" drawer, fonts go in "fonts" and so on..
no weird behavior, no strange logic .. etc ..
- you feel you're the one using it .. and not the OS using you
- it's fun to use.. you enjoy using a computer with amigaos.

I for one am glad that Hyperion finally released AmigaOS4. You don't need a PhD in computer science in order to get anything done in it like you do with Linux AND the Amiga OS does NOT treat you like an idiot like every version of Windows since Windows 95 does. Granted the security of AmigaOS is a joke, but it was NEVER meant to be a multi-user OS running client-server applications across a network. I for one will not miss the various hardware issues I keep having with Linux, nor will I miss the spyware and virii and the looming DRM garbage coming down the road via Windows. If these are the best OS's out there, then everyone is paying too high a cost in order to sit on the bleeding edge of technology.

OS 4 looks very interesting. Too bad the hardware is non existant. Does anyone know if it runs under something like Qemu on windows/linux? Also would it be possible for them to distrute an image so we could try it, like a live CD?